TY - JOUR
T1 - Inappropriate Fiddling with Statistical Analyses to Obtain a Desirable P-value: Tests to Detect its Presence in Published Literature
A1 - Gadbury, Gary L.
A1 - Allison, David B.
Y1 - 2012/10/08
N2 - Much has been written regarding p-values below certain thresholds (most notably 0.05) denoting statistical significance and the tendency of such p-values to be more readily publishable in peer-reviewed journals. Intuition suggests that there may be a tendency to manipulate statistical analyses to push a “near significant p-value” to a level that is considered significant. This article presents a method for detecting the presence of such manipulation (herein called “fiddling”) in a distribution of p-values from independent studies. Simulations are used to illustrate the properties of the method. The results suggest that the method has low type I error and that power approaches acceptable levels as the number of p-values being studied approaches 1000.
JF - PLOS ONE
JA - PLOS ONE
VL - 7
IS - 10
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0046363
SP - e46363
EP -
PB - Public Library of Science
M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046363
ER -